Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter by Diana Souhami (recommended books to read TXT) 📕

herself from responsibility for Violet and forced Harold and all of them to fight for her. At Lady Sackville’s urgent call Harold left Paris for London. George Keppel ‘in a white rage’ went to Sir Neville Macready, head of Scotland Yard, and asked him to have all the ports watched and to detain his daughter.

Vita and Denys crossed the Channel together. They got on curiously well. Denys said they could not complain that life was dull. The weather was stormy. At Calais they went to the buffet for lunch. Violet found them there. She was trembling, pale and had not eaten or slept for twenty-four hours. She had been to Amiens, left her luggage at the Hôtel du Rhin, then returned to Calais desperate to meet Vita off the boat. They all ate chicken and champagne, booked in at a hotel and next day motored to Boulogne and took the train to Amiens.

On the train Denys wrote on a scrap of paper that he knew Violet’s mind was made up and he would leave her at Amiens. Vita moved to an adjacent carriage. Denys cried. It was for him another exercise in humiliation. At Amiens he took the next train to Paris, then returned to London. Violet and Vita went to their hotel and Vita spent more time telephoning and telegraphing, so that everyone should know precisely where she was.

Next day, while she waited for rescue, they looked at Amiens and the devastation of war: stained-glass windows in the cathedral broken and boarded up, windowless houses, shelled roads. First to arrive was George Keppel. ‘He was pompous, theatrical and unimpressive. He stormed at us and it was all we could do to keep from laughing.’ He stood guard and wired to Denys to come at once.

At Grosvenor Street it was arranged that Denys, who was perhaps tired of trains and boats, should pilot a two-seater plane back to Amiens at 7 a.m. on the morning of 14 February. He was to keep Violet out of England. He must take her to Vichy, Nîmes, Toulon, Nice, anywhere away from scandal, Vita, Sonia’s marriage chances and society’s gaze.

Harold arrived at his mother’s house from Paris. Lady Sackville called at Grosvenor Street, ‘interviewed’ Denys and asked him to take Harold to Amiens too. The drama caught her imagination. She wrote in her diary:

Denys was very cool and collected, and fully determined to bring Violet back or have done with her. I have been thinking all day of those two husbands flying to Amiens to try and each get his wife back; quite like a sensational novel.

The two husbands got to Amiens in a couple of hours. Harold, in an endeavour to be assertive, ordered Vita to pack which at his order she refused to do. Denys looked pale and ill. Violet told him she loathed him. He stared at her in silence. She then went to the restaurant and ordered coffee for herself. Harold, up in the bedroom, asked Vita, ‘Are you sure Violet is as faithful to you as she makes you believe? Because Denys has told your mother quite a different story.’

At that point Vita lost control. Here was both her excuse for liberation from Violet and the focus of her obsession. The idea unleashed her rage about sexual possession. ‘Violet is mine,’ she had said. She scarcely cared whether her mother’s testimony was true or false or what the question implied. She raged at Denys: ‘have you ever been really married to Violet?’ – meaning had he had sex with her? He gave an evasive reply.

She went into the restaurant and challenged Violet. There was a scene and screaming. Colonel Keppel could not have liked it and the hotel staff must have wondered about English aristocrats. Denys held Violet while Vita rushed upstairs and packed not at Harold’s request but in response to the betrayal by Violet she chose to perceive. She had her justification for leaving with Harold.

She kissed Violet publicly, though Harold and Denys tried to stop her, then she and Harold took the train to Paris. George Keppel was on the same train. His mission seemingly accomplished, he was going on to St Moritz to join Alice for a winter holiday. Harold and Vita booked in at the Paris Ritz and, while they ate their evening meal – Vita could only manage the soup – Violet and Denys arrived.

Harold did not want another public scene and asked Violet and Vita to talk upstairs. There, Violet described such sex as had occurred between her and Denys. She said it had been against her will. Denys came in. Vita questioned him. He replied, ‘This must never go further than this room; I promise you that there has never been anything of that kind between Violet and me.’

But Vita needed her excuse to leave with Harold and not be responsible for Violet. She told her she could not bear to see her for two months. ‘Two months and what then?’ Violet was to write. The answer was more of the same if she could take it. To Harold Vita said she would have killed her unless she left. ‘She calls it banishment – it is not. It is simply the impossibility of bringing myself to see her for the present.’

To Denys Vita gave Violet’s money for the house in Sicily. He passed it back to his wife: ‘How could you give it back to him? It kills me to see it in my purse’ Violet was later to write.

Thus the affair, though postponed, could continue. Vita would not have to live with Violet but nor had she let her go. She kept Harold, the children, Long Barn. Violet stayed married to Denys. She was his responsibility. This context, reinforced, was anguish for Violet and Denys. They were again in each other’s sole company, all the fraudulence of their marriage clear, ostracized from society, with nothing in common and nowhere to go. That night Violet wrote a despairing letter to Vita:

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